Lunch on the Elephant Trail

Last Monday I spent my day with an elephant. It certainly isn’t something I ever imagined I would do in my life. There are lots of elephant excursions in Thailand, but this one was a bit different. My husband and I enjoyed a full day at Patara Elephant Farm in Chiang Mai, Thailand, an organization the works to prevent the extinction of the Asian elephant and also operates as a rescue for the elephants as well as breeding them to preserve their existence.

The elephant trainer for a day program involved each of us, there were 5 in our group, be assigned to one elephant for the whole day. We bathed them, fed them, swam with them and rode them bareback for almost two hours throughout the country side, up steep hills and through creek beds. Simply unbelievable.

What does this have to do with food?

Our day with the elephants included what is probably one of the tastiest, not to mention most beautiful, picnics I’ve ever had. Laid out atop a banana leaf tablecloth, along the rocky path next to the water, were all kinds of Thai foods which had been prepared for us by a woman in a nearby village.

First, each person had three portions or rice. The one on the right was savory sticky rice to eat with the crispy fried chicken show in the photos below. The middle was purple sticky rice with coconut and then sweet sticky rice with egg custard. My favorite was the purple sticky riced with it’s incredibly nutty flavor and the pieces of coconut on top.

The small round cakes included one made of coconut that was a lot like a coconut gel. The yellow one was palm cake. The small yellow blobs (for lack of a better term) were sweetened egg yolks. Such a delicious combination of ingredients. The palm cake was our favorite.

Then, of course, there was fruit, every bit as fresh and delicious as the varieties we enjoyed in Brazil. Believe it or not, this was my first opportunity to try the red/pink dragon fruit. I found it to be much more flavorful than the white variety, very sweet with seeds similar to a kiwi. Just the beautiful color alone makes it exciting to eat.

Next was a huge selection of sweets steamed in leaves. Some were very similar to the sticky rices we’d already tried. One was a steamed banana cake that I failed to get a photo of. It was brown in color and had a very dense, gel-like texture. The most interesting was the rice and red bean steamed in the bamboo with palm sugar. This dessert exists in several Asian cultures I believe, but this was my first opportunity to have it.

No need to be worried about hungry elephants. They had a nice basket of bananas and sugarcane when we first arrived. Then they got all the vegetarian leftovers from our lunch, including the banana leaf we used as a tablecloth.

And this was no zoomed picture with the camera. My husband’s elephant, Say Thong, was munching some sugar cane right next to me.

I thought I would mention that, unfortunately, I’m having some major problems with the hosting account for my new blog, The 3 Star Traveler. I’m not sure that I will have the computer time to resolve it before the trip’s end so I will be sure to continue posting here when time allows.

Also, I just want to extend a big thank you for reading. Obviously my schedule is keeping me from staying up to date with everyone’s blogs and I truly appreciate that you are still reading mine. You’ll find me commenting again in a few weeks.